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Graph theory can be applied to ecological questions in many ways, and more insights can be gained by expanding the range of graph theoretical concepts applied to a specific system. But how do you know which methods might be used? And what do you do with the graph once it has been obtained? This book provides a broad introduction to the application of graph theory in different ecological systems, providing practical guidance for researchers in ecology and related fields. Readers are guided through the creation of an appropriate graph for the system being studied, including the application of spatial, spatio-temporal, and more abstract structural process graphs. Simple figures accompany the explanations to add clarity, and a broad range of ecological phenomena from many ecological systems are covered. This is the ideal book for graduate students and researchers looking to apply graph theoretical methods in their work.

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It is being increasingly recognised that cultural and biological diversity are deeply linked and that conservation programmes should take into account the ethical, cultural and spiritual values of nature. With contributions from a range of scholars, practitioners and spiritual leaders from around the world, this book provides new insights into biocultural diversity conservation. It explores sacred landscapes, sites, plants and animals from around the world to demonstrate the links between nature conservation and spiritual beliefs and traditions. Key conceptual topics are connected to case studies, as well as modern and ancient spiritual insights, guiding the reader through the various issues from fundamental theory and beliefs to practical applications. It looks forward to the biocultural agenda, providing guidelines for future research and practice and offering suggestions for improved integration of these values into policy, planning and management.

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The application and interpretation of statistics are central to ecological study and practice. Ecologists are now asking more sophisticated questions than in the past. These new questions, together with the continued growth of computing power and the availability of new software, have created a new generation of statistical techniques. These have resulted in major recent developments in both our understanding and practice of ecological statistics. This novel book synthesizes a number of these changes, addressing key approaches and issues that tend to be overlooked in other books such as missing/censored data, correlation structure of data, heterogeneous data, and complex causal relationships. These issues characterize a large proportion of ecological data, but most ecologists' training in traditional statistics simply does not provide them with adequate preparation to handle the associated challenges. Uniquely, Ecological Statistics highlights the underlying links among many statistical approaches that attempt to tackle these issues. In particular, it gives readers an introduction to approaches to inference, likelihoods, generalized linear (mixed) models, spatially or phylogenetically-structured data, and data synthesis, with a strong emphasis on conceptual understanding and subsequent application to data analysis. Written by a team of practicing ecologists, mathematical explanations have been kept to the minimum necessary. This user-friendly textbook will be suitable for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of ecology, evolution, environmental studies, and computational biology who are interested in updating their statistical tool kits. A companion web site provides example data sets and commented code in the R language.

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While typically many approaches have been mainly mathematics focused, graph theory has become a tool used by scientists, researchers, and engineers in using modeling techniques to solve real-world problems. Graph Theory for Operations Research and Management: Applications in Industrial Engineering presents traditional and contemporary applications of graph theory in the areas of industrial engineering, management science, and applied operations research. This comprehensive collection of research introduces the useful basic concepts of graph theory in real world applications.

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Graphs, networks and agent-based modeling are the most thriving and attracting sciences used in ecology and environmental sciences. As such, this book is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject in the areas of ecology and environmental sciences. From this integrated and self-contained book, researchers, university teachers and students will be provided with an in-depth and complete insight on knowledge, methodology and recent advances of graphs, networks and agent-based-modeling in ecology and environmental sciences. Java codes and a standalone software package will be presented in the book for easy use for those not familiar with mathematical details.

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Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental Research is the basis for advanced Earth Observation (EO) datasets used in environmental monitoring and research. Now that there are a number of satellites in orbit, EO has become imperative in today’s sciences, weather and natural disaster prediction. This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse studies on remote sensing and GIS, from a theoretical background to its applications, represented through various case studies and the findings of new models. The book offers a comprehensive range of contributions by well-known scientists from around the world and opens a new window for students in presenting interdisciplinary and methodological resources on the latest research. It explores various key aspects and offers state-of-the-art research in a simplified form, describing remote sensing and GIS studies for those who are new to the field, as well as for established researchers.

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The study of network theory is a highly interdisciplinary field, which has emerged as a major topic of interest in various disciplines ranging from physics and mathematics, to biology and sociology. This book promotes the diverse nature of the study of complex networks by balancing the needs of students from very different backgrounds. It references the most commonly used concepts in network theory, provides examples of their applications in solving practical problems, and clear indications on how to analyse their results. In the first part of the book, students and researchers will discover the quantitative and analytical tools necessary to work with complex networks, including the most basic concepts in network and graph theory, linear and matrix algebra, as well as the physical concepts most frequently used for studying networks. They will also find instruction on some key skills such as how to proof analytic results and how to manipulate empirical network data. The bulk of the text is focused on instructing readers on the most useful tools for modern practitioners of network theory. These include degree distributions, random networks, network fragments, centrality measures, clusters and communities, communicability, and local and global properties of networks. The combination of theory, example and method that are presented in this text, should ready the student to conduct their own analysis of networks with confidence and allow teachers to select appropriate examples and problems to teach this subject in the classroom.

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The book integrates approaches from mathematics, physics and computer sciences to analyse the organisation of complex networks. Every organisational principle of networks is defined, quantified and then analysed for its influences on the properties and functions of molecular, biological, ecological and social networks.

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Biogeography was stuck in a "natural history phase" dominated by the collection of data, the young Princeton biologists Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson argued in 1967. In this book, the authors developed a general theory to explain the facts of island biogeography. The theory builds on the first principles of population ecology and genetics to explain how distance and area combine to regulate the balance between immigration and extinction in island populations. The authors then test the theory against data. The Theory of Island Biogeography was never intended as the last word on the subject. Instead, MacArthur and Wilson sought to stimulate new forms of theoretical and empirical studies, which will lead in turn to a stronger general theory. Even a third of a century since its publication, the book continues to serve that purpose well. From popular books like David Quammen's Song of the Dodo to arguments in the professional literature, The Theory of Island Biogeography remains at the center of discussions about the geographic distribution of species. In a new preface, Edward O. Wilson reviews the origins and consequences of this classic book.

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Written by experts in both mathematics and biology, Algebraic and Discrete Mathematical Methods for Modern Biology offers a bridge between math and biology, providing a framework for simulating, analyzing, predicting, and modulating the behavior of complex biological systems. Each chapter begins with a question from modern biology, followed by the description of certain mathematical methods and theory appropriate in the search of answers. Every topic provides a fast-track pathway through the problem by presenting the biological foundation, covering the relevant mathematical theory, and highlighting connections between them. Many of the projects and exercises embedded in each chapter utilize specialized software, providing students with much-needed familiarity and experience with computing applications, critical components of the "modern biology" skill set. This book is appropriate for mathematics courses such as finite mathematics, discrete structures, linear algebra, abstract/modern algebra, graph theory, probability, bioinformatics, statistics, biostatistics, and modeling, as well as for biology courses such as genetics, cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, ecology, and evolution. Examines significant questions in modern biology and their mathematical treatments Presents important mathematical concepts and tools in the context of essential biology Features material of interest to students in both mathematics and biology Presents chapters in modular format so coverage need not follow the Table of Contents Introduces projects appropriate for undergraduate research Utilizes freely accessible software for visualization, simulation, and analysis in modern biology Requires no calculus as a prerequisite Provides a complete Solutions Manual Features a companion website with supplementary resources

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Ecology is in a challenging state as a scientific discipline. While some theoretical ecologists are attempting to build a definition of ecology from first principles, many others are questioning even the feasibility of a general and universal theory. At the same time, it is increasingly important that ecology is accurately and functionally defined for a generation of researchers tackling escalating environmental problems in the face of doubt and disagreement. The authors of Theory-Based Ecology have written a textbook that presents a robust, modern, and mathematically sound theory of ecology, maintaining a strong link between empirical data, models, and theory. It is firmly based in Darwinian thought, since it was Darwin who first revealed the ecological principles of the origin of species, and gave the evolution of diversity a process-based, mechanistic explanation. The authors base their synthetic theory of Darwinian ecology on seven key principles: exponential growth, growth regulation, inherited individual differences, finiteness and stochasticity, competitive exclusion, robust coexistence, and constraints and trade-offs. Within this solid conceptual framework, they integrate classic and actual empirical knowledge from ecology and evolutionary biology, clarifying methodological and mathematical detail in clear and helpful text boxes. A wealth of illustrated examples pertaining to different organisational levels (alleles, clones and species) helps to explain how the principles operate. This is an invaluable resource for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in the fields of ecology, genetics, evolutionary ecology, and mathematical biology.

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This title meets a great demand for training in spatial analysis tools accessible to a wide audience. Landscape ecology continues to grow as an exciting discipline with much to offer for solving pressing and emerging problems in environmental science. Much of the strength of landscape ecology lies in its ability to address challenges over large areas, over spatial and temporal scales at which decision-making often occurs. As the world tackles issues related to sustainability and global change, the need for this broad perspective has only increased. Furthermore, spatial data and spatial analysis (core methods in landscape ecology) are critical for analyzing land-cover changes world-wide. While spatial dynamics have long been fundamental to terrestrial conservation strategies, land management and reserve design, mapping and spatial themes are increasingly recognized as important for ecosystem management in aquatic, coastal and marine systems. This second edition is purposefully more applied and international in its examples, approaches, perspectives and contributors. It includes new advances in quantifying landscape structure and connectivity (such as graph theory), as well as labs that incorporate the latest scientific understanding of ecosystem services, resilience, social-ecological landscapes, and even seascapes. Of course, as before, the exercises emphasize easy-to-use, widely available software.

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This pioneering work examines changes in the life and values of the English working class in response to mass media. First published in 1957, it mapped out a new methodology in cultural studies based around interdisciplinarity and a concern with how texts-in this case, mass publications-are stitched into the patterns of lived experience. Mixing personal memoir with social history and cultural critique, The Uses of Literacy anticipates recent interest in modes of cultural analysis that refuse to hide the author behind the mask of objective social scientific technique. In its method and in its rich accumulation of the detail of working-class life, this volume remains useful and absorbing. Hoggart's analysis achieves much of its power through a careful delineation of the complexities of working-class attitudes and its sensitivity to the physical and environmental facts of working-class life. The people he portrays are neither the sentimentalized victims of a culture of deference nor neo-fascist hooligans. Hoggart sees beyond habits to what habits stand for and sees through statements to what the statements really mean. He thus detects the differing pressures of emotion behind idiomatic phrases and ritualistic observances. Through close observation and an emotional empathy deriving, in part, from his own working-class background, Hoggart defines a fairly homogeneous and representative group of working-class people. Against this background may be seen how the various appeals of mass publications and other artifacts of popular culture connect with traditional and commonly accepted attitudes, how they are altering those attitudes, and how they are meeting resistance. Hoggart argues that the appeals made by mass publicists-more insistent, effective, and pervasive than in the past-are moving toward the creation of an undifferentiated mass culture and that the remnants of an authentic urban culture are being destroyed. In his introduction to this new edition, Andrew Goodwin, professor of broadcast communications arts at San Francisco State University, defines Hoggart's place among contending schools of English cultural criticism and points out the prescience of his analysis for developments in England over the past thirty years. He notes as well the fruitful links to be made between Hoggart's method and findings and aspects of popular culture in the United States.

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Drawing upon the explosion of research in the field, a diverse group of scholars surveys strategies for solving ecological inference problems, the process of trying to infer individual behavior from aggregate data. The uncertainties and information lost in aggregation make ecological inference one of the most difficult areas of statistical inference, but these inferences are required in many academic fields, as well as by legislatures and the Courts in redistricting, marketing research by business, and policy analysis by governments. This wide-ranging collection of essays, first published in 2004, offers many important contributions to the study of ecological inference.

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For millennia, humans have regarded snakes with an exceptional combination of fascination and revulsion. Some people recoil in fear at the very suggestion of these creatures, while others happily keep them as pets. Snakes can convey both beauty and menace in a single tongue flick and so these creatures have held a special place in our cultures. Yet, for as many meanings that we attribute to snakes—from fertility and birth to sin and death—the real-life species represent an even wider array of wonders. The Book of Snakes presents 600 species of snakes from around the world, covering nearly one in six of all snake species. It will bring greater understanding of a group of reptiles that have existed for more than 160 million years, and that now inhabit every continent except Antarctica, as well as two of the great oceans. This volume pairs spectacular photos with easy-to-digest text. It is the first book on these creatures that combines a broad, worldwide sample with full-color, life-size accounts. Entries include close-ups of the snake’s head and a section of the snake at actual size. The detailed images allow readers to examine the intricate scale patterns and rainbow of colors as well as special features like a cobra’s hood or a rattlesnake’s rattle. The text is written for laypeople and includes a glossary of frequently used terms. Herpetologists and herpetoculturists alike will delight in this collection, and even those with a more cautious stance on snakes will find themselves drawn in by the wild diversity of the suborder Serpentes.

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The book presents a way to study ecosystems that is not yet available in current textbooks but is resonant with current thinking in the emerging fields of geobiology and Earth System Science. It asks and endeavours to answer the question, "what are the really fundamental characteristics of living systems that might allow them to sustain life?" The author goes on to show how the idea of fundamental ecological processes can be developed at the systems level, specifically their involvement in control and feedback mechanisms. This is not a popular science book about Gaian theory, instead it is written as a text and is directed at a predominantly scientific audience.